About The Day That Women Stop campaign
There is a gender pay gap for women in the UK when it comes to paid and unpaid work
As a society we tell women they can have it all if they work hard enough and want it enough. The reality? Women are consistently being paid less than men for equal work and are still carrying the burden of unpaid work such as childcare, housework and caring for family members.
The Day That Women Stop campaign will highlight the gender pay gap in paid and unpaid work for women. We want to raise awareness of these issues and that the gender pay gap – for paid and unpaid work - remains.
There is a gender pay gap for paid work in the UK
This pay gap extends to unpaid work
This inequality extends across the globe
The gender pay gap in the UK is now 11.3%, up from 10.7% last year.
In the UK the gap between men and women’s pay persists, women and their families are losing out. On average, women earn £631 less than men every month. That’s on average £7,572 less a year.
Women carry out an overall average of 60% more unpaid work than men. This includes childcare, caring for adults, housework and cooking in the UK
Globally, women earn approximately 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.
Globally women and girls undertake more than three-quarters of unpaid care work in the world.
Across the world women and girls carry out 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work every day.
The Day That Women Stop awareness raising campaign is inspired by the ‘Women’s Day Off’ campaign for greater gender inequality in Iceland. It has been 50 years since women in Iceland first ‘took the day off’ in 1975 and we want to celebrate this and stand alongside them through our own activity in in the UK.
Campaign organisers
The Day That Women Stop awareness raising campaign in the UK is organised by Dr Nic Sharp-Jeffs OBE and Clare Laxton.
Nic and Clare are organising this grassroots campaign because they are so passionate about this issue. They hope that the awareness around the gender pay gap in paid and unpaid work and The Day That Women Stop campaign gains momentum over the coming years so that awareness translates into much-needed action.
Dr Nic Sharp-Jeffs OBE
Dr Nic Sharp-Jeffs OBE is an internationally recognised expert on economic abuse and women’s economic safety. Her work began with conversations with survivors and led to the first UK research on economic abuse in 2008, during which she developed the Economic Power & Control Wheel, now used globally.
A Churchill Fellow and Emeritus Research Fellow at London Metropolitan University, she founded the charity Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) in 2017, leading it until 2024. Under her leadership, economic abuse was formally recognised in UK law and pioneering financial sector guidance was introduced.
She was awarded an OBE in 2020 for services to victims of domestic and economic abuse and won the ‘Financial Safety’ award at the 2025 Refuge Tech Safety Awards. She has now taken her work global and co-leads the International Alliance Against Economic Abuse (ICAEA). She also advises global organisations, including the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Grameen Foundation
Clare Laxton
Clare Laxton is an influencing and communications professional with nearly 20 years of experience creating change in the UK charity sector and beyond. She has led national campaigns that have created lasting change in the areas of domestic abuse and coercive control, support for grieving families and the recognition of the needs and experiences of women living with complex trauma.
In 2025, alongside colleague and friend Sian Hawkins, Clare co-founded Hawkins Laxton & Co, a boutique communications and influencing agency that turns strategy into storytelling for a range of purpose-driven organisations.
As well as her paid work Clare is also doing a PhD in Criminal Justice with a focus on intimate partner homicide and coercive control – from campaigning for the law to researching the law.
Clare also created and hosts Killer in the family podcast which tells the stories of victims of familicide and raises awareness of domestic abuse and coercive control. Clare is a storyteller by trade and is passionate about the power of stories to change lives and change narratives.